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Until recently, attending an entertainment event was essentially a passive affair – you paid your money and took a seat as the spectacle unfolded before you.
However, a revolution has recently taken place in the way organisers have sought to host their events, the emphasis now on bringing the audience slap-bang into the middle of proceedings.
Much of this change has been driven by the advent of super high-definition digital projectors and screens allied with the transformative power of virtual reality (VR).
This new tech allows audiences to become part of the action and take an active role in the spectacles they attend like never before, especially in the visual arts and participatory events space.
London has been at the forefront of this change, and many of the most mind-boggling immersive experiences anywhere in the world can be found in the capital.
Our list contains ten of the best of these London-based immersive experiences. Most of our selections are permanent but two – ABBA and Friends – won’t be around forever. The former is due to close its doors in May 2025 and Friends, which opens this summer, isn’t expected to be a permanent fixture either.
We think we have something for every taste and budget – from blockbuster art events that bring pictures to life to mind-blowing multisensory experiences that will leave attendees questioning their sense of reality.
1. Vincent Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
💫 https://t.co/WKQlCR10mq ✨
Big thanks to @younggwangeee for joining us! 🙏✨ Come dive into the experience yourself! pic.twitter.com/PZUxRrkEYu— Van Gogh Exhibit (@VanGoghExp) April 30, 2024
The Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh went largely uncelebrated during his lifetime. Subsequent generations have sought to put this right by finding ways to bring the man’s art to the public’s notice.
This immersive experience on Commercial Road is the latest and probably most spectacular exhibition of the artist’s work ever mounted.
The exhibition has been touring the world since 2017, winning scores of awards and accolades, and has finally arrived in London.
The site on Commercial Road has a thousand square feet of digital display space to play with around the building’s circumference, which allows the event organisers to provide visitors with stunning 360-degree views of 200 of the artist’s most striking images.
Visitors are free to pootle around the space as they take in the finer detail of the high-definition renderings of the Dutchman’s drawings, but they can also install themselves in a deckchair if they wish to soak up the imagery from a seated position.
But to take the immersive experience to the next level the art fans really need to don a VR headset, which brings the works of art up close and personal in a way that few other art exhibitions can rival.
The VR-assisted viewer takes a stroll through eight of the artist’s most celebrated paintings thanks to ‘A Day in the Life of the Artist in Arles’, a fully immersive experience that retraces the painter’s steps in rural France.
The journey begins in his bedroom and moves onto a wheatfield in France, a scene – half-real, half-imagined – that presented itself from his asylum window in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and that he drew on to come up with his most famous painting, Starry Night.
Finally, visitors should also take advantage of the on-site studio before they leave. It is a place where budding artists can sketch their own pictures and have them displayed on the site’s screens for others to enjoy.
Venue
106 Commercial Street, London, E1 6LZ.
Website: https://vangoghexpo.com/london/
Prices
Adult ticket (13+) prices start at £19.90.
Child ticket prices start at £11.50.
Free entry for children under four.
2. Abba Voyage
We’ll see you on the dance floor. ✨ pic.twitter.com/5yAohTMycN
— ABBA Voyage (@ABBAVoyage) May 17, 2024
Half a century may have passed since the fab four from Sweden last appeared together on stage together in a live show, but the clamour for the group to reunite refuses to abate.
This immersive experience at the Excel Centre gives fans their heart’s desire – well, sort of – by bringing back Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid as all-singing, all-dancing digital avatars, backed by a live 10-piece band.
The digital doppelgangers – referred to by the unfortunate portmanteau ABBAtars – are the brainchild of Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects company behind the CGI on the Star Wars and Marvel films.
The 90-minute show sees the group perform 22 of their greatest hits, including the crowd-pleasers Voulez-Vous, Lay All Your Love on Me and Thank You for the Music.
To add to the uncanniness of the proceedings there are even lulls in the performance, during which the avatars engage in a bit of banter – Benny can be heard carping about the British judges awarding the group a miserly nul points at the 1974 Eurovision.
Attendees can party from a seat and can also book a spot on the dancefloor slap bang in the middle of the venue and dance along with fellow ABBA fanatics.
Venue
ABBA Arena, Pudding Mill Lane, London, E15 2RU.
Website: https://abbavoyage.com/
Prices
Ticket prices start at £21.50 plus a £2.95 Ticketmaster handling fee.
You can book up to 14 tickets at a time for the main auditorium and dance floor and up to 44 tickets in the dance booths.
Book tickets here.
3. Gunpowder Plot
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If you fancy going back to a time when England was riven by sectarian strife and treachery was the order of the day, then this immersive experience near the Tower of London is the one for you.
The experience is brought to life by an ensemble cast of characters – headed up ably by Tim Felton (Harry Potter) as the infamous Fawkes – each of whom is committed to the role every bit as much as Fawkes was to his role as would-be regicide.
In addition to Felton’s Fawkes, the cast features a rough and ready lot of seventeenth-century near-do-wells, some of whom try subtly to make participants party to the plot. The cast also cleverly strives to give guests a look at both sides of the coin, keeping them second-guessing about the motives of everyone they encounter as the drama unfolds.
In addition to the live-action and role-playing, the experience involves a trio of segments where visitors are expected to wear VR headsets, including one that features a thrilling white-knuckle swing ride.
The experience is relieved by a 20-minute break where visitors can take on some old-time refreshment in the Duke and Drake, modelled on the real boozer where the papists plotted their dastardly deed.
Venue
8-12 Tower Hill Vaults, London, EC3N 4EE.
Website: https://gunpowderimmersive.com/
Price
Prices start at £32 per person.
Book tickets here.
4. The Friends Experience: The One in London
What better way to enjoy the first few weeks of fall than cozying up on our favorite orange couch in Central Perk at The FRIENDS™ Experience? We can’t think of one! #TheFriendsExperience #FriendsTheExperience #TheOneWhere #Pivot #Friends pic.twitter.com/UH5K4YrsAh
— The FRIENDS™ Experience (@FriendsTheExp) October 5, 2023
The hit US TV show has been off-air for over twenty years, but it continues to live long in the memory and hearts of many Generation Xers and Millennials.
To mark the thirtieth anniversary of the show’s debut, the London version of this hit immersive experience launches in August 2024
It has already proved a roaring success across the pond in New York, Boston and Las Vegas, and will no doubt win over an equal number of Brits when it transitions to the ExCel Centre this summer.
The experience imports many of the mainstays of the US version – the famous fountain the cast dances in during the opening credits, the iconic purple door in Monica’s apartment (and its equally iconic peephole), and Joey and Chandler’s apartment, complete with foosball table.
Elements have also been added to tailor the experience to its London audience, including scenery and memorabilia from season four’s London episodes (The One with Ross’ Wedding Parts 1 & 2).
This means fans can step inside a recreated wedding scene at the semi-demolished St. John’s Church and interact with Joey’s famous London 3D map.
Venue
The Waterfront, ExCeL, London.
Website: https://london.friendstheexperience.com/
Prices
Prices for an adult (16+) start at £20.
Prices for a Child (over 10) start at £10. Under 10s go free.
You can save with a multi-buy (6 tickets for the price of 5): £16 per person.
There is also a VIP experience ticket from £65 which includes a queue jump, professional photos, and an exclusive tote bag.
Book tickets here.
5. The London Dungeon
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Having first opened its doors in 1974, the London Dungeon in South Bank is as much a part of London’s rich history as the gory events and happenings it memorialises.
Visitors are welcomed by the dungeon’s resident jester in a dirty motley and whisked away to the bowels of the building where the adventure starts in earnest.
Many of the experiences are not for the faint-hearted and are heavy on the blood and gore, especially the ones that deal with the Elizabethan and Jacobean London.
For example, you’ll discover in graphic and gory detail exactly what happened to Guy Fawkes during his ten days of torture in the Tower of London and also learn how torturers used the ‘Pear of Anguish’ and ‘Chappy Chopper’ to get their victims to divulge information.
The gore-fest continues with elements that feature The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sweeny Todd, and the Pest House, where visitors are invited to see out the worst of plague-hit London, all the while a mischievous charwoman tries to steal their possessions.
To top things off, there is also a ride in the shape of Drop Dead, which is meant to give thrill-seekers a taste of what it was like to face the gallows at London’s most notorious prison, Newgate.
Venue
Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Rd, London, SE1 7PB.
Website: https://www.thedungeons.com/london/
Prices
Standard ticket prices start at £26.50.
The Afternoon Saver ticket is priced at £19.
Book tickets here.
6. Frameless
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The organisers of this uber-immersive experience in Marble Arch boast that the event is the largest permanent multi-sensory experience in the UK.
Given that the site occupies a massive 30,000 square feet of space, boasts four fully immersive art galleries and has cutting-edge screens and projectors that sport a whopping 450 million pixels and pump out a mighty million lumens of retina-scorching brightness, it is hard to argue with them.
The folk behind Frameless put the cavernous space they have at their disposal to good use, hosting 42 world-famous artworks by the likes of Cezanne, Kandinsky, Monet, Dali, Canaletto, Rembrandt and Klimt across its four main galleries.
The four galleries are:
- Colour in Motion: This gallery leans heavily on Impressionist works by the likes of Seurat, Monet and Van Gogh. It is also kitted out with advanced motion tracking tech from Microsoft, which allows attendees to paint their own Monet-esque masterpieces simply by gesturing and moving. This system uses a panoply of cameras to track guests’ movements, with the data converted and projected in real-time onto the screens.
- Art of Abstraction: This gallery is really a hall of mirrors that uses clever projectors to take visitors beyond the boundaries of reality and transport them to a Dali-esque world of surrealist phantasmagoria.
- Beyond Reality: This gallery is heavy on artwork that features abstract shapes, symbolic content and distorted forms. Visitors are left both nonplussed and unnerved by the logic-bending works.
- World Around Us: The largest gallery at Frameless is also its most spectacular. Images come to life, with guests experiencing crashing waves, bustling cities and the precipice of a fiery volcano. The installation bewitches visitors by cleverly using wall, floor and ceiling projectors to envelop them.
Guests are invited to take a seat, either on a bench or the floor, and let the images (literally in some instances) wash over them. Indeed, the pictures on show aren’t static, as in a traditional exhibition, but animated by special motion technology that brings them to life.
This allows the paintings to come to life in ways gallerygoers wouldn’t expect. In Bosh’s Garden of Earthly Delights, for example, the birds of paradise don’t stay on the digital canvas but take wing while in Rembrandt’s Christ in the Storm on Galilee, the sea roils and bursts over spectators, leaving them wondering how they’ve escaped the experience unscathed and unsoaked.
The galleries are an assault on more than just the visual sense – tailored soundtracks, piped into the rooms via 158 state-of-the-art surround sound speakers, bathe the ear in a soundscape that matches the imagery perfectly.
Both the Colour in Motion and The Art of Abstraction galleries are accompanied by an original musical score composed by Nick Powell, while Chapman Hammond is the curator of the soundscapes in both Beyond Reality and The World Around Us galleries.
The galleries are also kitted out with handy QR codes, which allow visitors to understand more about the works on display as they traverse the site.
Venue
Frameless, 6 Marble Arch, London, W1H 7AP.
Website: https://frameless.com/
Prices
Adult ticket prices start at £27.
Child (3-15) prices start at £17.
Book tickets here.
7. The Twist Museum
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As the name of this immersive experience in Oxford Street suggests, it has been designed to play with visitors’ minds and twist their perceptions.
According to the people behind this experience, Twist is an acronym that stands for The Way I See Things, the aim being to make visitors question their perceptions and puzzle over how we manage to live and work together despite the fact we all see the world differently.
To this end, a group of artists, neuroscientists and philosophers has devised a series of interconnected zones that host a range of uniquely immersive multisensory experiences.
Illusion is central to the experience, with mind-altering immersive rooms allowing visitors to get up close and personal with interactive illusions that play cleverly with how the human brain interprets the world.
The illusions pose some interesting philosophical quandaries, such as whether we can see colours that aren’t real and how we find our bearings in a space devoid of directional clues.
Venue
248 Oxford Street, Oxford Circus, London, W1C 1DH.
Website: https://twistmuseum.com/
Prices
Adult ticket prices start at £19.50.
Child (4-14) ticket prices start at £15.
Book tickets here.
8. Monopoly Lifesized
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Budding landlords and property magnates can now live out their dreams in 4D thanks to this supersized version of the famous board game on Tottenham Court Road.
Guests are greeted by the moustachioed Mr Monopoly himself, a nice touch before the cut and thrust of buying and renting real estate begins in earnest.
Players must complete fiendish escape-room-type challenges to be eligible to build houses and charge that all-important rent. But remember jail is never far away and must be avoided at all costs.
As in the real game, there are also municipal properties up for grabs which means players can seize control of London’s waterworks and its famous public transport system – maybe they can do a better job of running it than TfL!
There are four exciting lifesized boards to choose from:
- Luxury Board
- Classic Board
- City Board
- Classic: Own It All
Venue
213-215 Tottenham Court Rd, London, W1T 7PS.
Website: https://www.monopolylifesized.com/
Prices
Adult ticket prices start at around £67.25.
Game & Dine tickets, which include a meal in the Top Hat restaurant, start at £77.25.
Book tickets here.
9. Outernet
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This site in Charing Cross currently stands as London’s most-visited attraction and boasts a gargantuan space, one that plays host to some of the most engaging and immersive entertainment events in the capital.
The good news is that many of the immersive experiences the site hosts are sponsored by a corporate and therefore free of charge.
In fact, over the summer of 2024, the site is putting on a trio of fully immersive experiences, all free of charge.
Its most recent installation is a botanical-themed immersive experience sponsored by Comfort, the fabric softener company, where visitors enjoy both a visual and olfactory immersive experience.
The 360-degree visuals are accompanied by plant-inspired scents that are pumped into the space – smells that are recognisable from laundry day as the aromas are drawn from Comfort’s range of fabric softeners.
Once guests have finished with the flora it is only natural they should pass on to the fauna of The Butterfly Trail, a mixed-reality experience featuring AR and real-time graphics.
The trail guides visitors through Professor Peter Pelgrin’s botanical workshop and his greenhouse where they can interact with their surroundings using a simple smartphone camera, which, when pointed in the right direction, releases magical AR butterflies that can be held in the palm of the hand.
Lastly, the site is also currently playing host to an immersive art-based experience created by Agustin Vidal Saavedra, XR creative lead at Dublin-based Glasseye Productions. The artists’s visuals mix Renaissance paintings, animations, particle simulations and 3D visuals.
Venue
Charing Cross Rd, London, WC2H 8LH.
Website: https://www.outernet.com/
Prices
Free entry.
10. Dopamine Land
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Anyone looking for a (legal) high, should look no further than this happiness-promoting immersive space in South Kensington.
Visitors’ dopamine receptors will never be the same again once they’ve passed through this super-interactive immersive experience.
Guests are invited to frolic on Sunset Beach, a ball pit with circling seagulls flying overhead that induce a sense of hypnotic tranquillity and marvel at the Galaxy of Lights, a vitreous dreamscape that is dripping with luminous baubles that transfix and transport in equal measure.
For a more active experience and a bit of an aerobic workout, the Step & Sound room is the place to be. Here visitors will find an interactive music space where they only have to step on the floor tiles to produce a musical note. Friends working in groups can use the tiles to bash out a veritable symphony of sounds.
After all the physical activity visitors are sure to need a bit of a break, so it is fortunate that the place also hosts the Woodland Wonderland, a chillout space perfect for taking a rest or even a nap in a fully immersive rustic setting.
However, if a chilled-out bosky scene is not somniferous enough, visitors can always head to the Lucid Dreams room, where geometric shapes and visual cues work to promote somnolence among occupants.
Venue
85 Old Brompton Rd, South Kensington, London, SW7 3LD.
Website: https://dopaminelandexperience.com/london/
Prices
Adult (16+) ticket prices start at £16.99.
Child (under 16) ticket prices start at £12.99.
Book tickets here.
Now it’s over to you to immerse yourself in any of those London experiences, whether you’re a local or a visitor.
If you think we missed something here, please get in touch with our team and we’ll happily review your suggestions.
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